1. Field of the Invention
The present invention discloses an image capture method and an image capture system thereof; more particularly, a burst image capture method of providing image frames along separate paths for preview and buffering concurrently.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As the popularity of portable devices increases hugely, functions equipped within the portable device becomes more variant. One of important functions that are widely used by consumers is image capture, such as camera. However, image capture operation of a portable device is often limited by its slow performance. When user launches the camera application, the camera of the portable device is in a preview mode and provides preview image frames of a scene on the display screen at first. When user desires to take a photo of a certain scene and triggers the shutter button (for example press shutter icon on the touch screen), the camera switches from preview mode to capture mode, and the preview of image frames would stop refreshing and the portable device is temporarily occupied by processing the captured image frame. As a result, if a user desires to capture multiple image frames, the time required to capture all image frames would be significantly long due to the camera has to switch in between preview mode and capture mode, and thus cannot provide burst photo within a short time. This is because that the camera provides preview of image frames in low resolution, but in capture mode, the image frames are captured in high resolution comparing with preview mode. Consequently, the camera needs to spend time to configure settings in response to mode change.
Another conventional way of performing burst image capture is to use the low resolution image frames in preview mode as captured image frames in capture mode. This can save the delay caused by mode change. However, the image quality may not be satisfying, and still the display screen is idled from refresh. Such kind of burst image capture generally performs image capture of predetermined number of image frames, which means that when user triggers such burst capture, the camera automatically captures the predetermined number of image frames. While the camera is capturing the image frames, the display screen is paused at the image frame previously display (prior to the trigger of burst image capture).
Therefore, there exists a need of an image capture method and system that is capable to capture high resolution image frame continuously without stopping refresh of preview image frame on display screen.